Riverbones

A dead river wakes—and a city must decide who it will forgive. When the long-dry Marrow shivers back to life, Millstown gathers on its banks to witness the impossible. Eleanor Hart, a water engineer who swore she'd never come home, hears the first thin rush and knows the river isn't a miracle—it's a summons. Beside her: Maya Carmichael, a science teacher with a field kit and a spine; Caleb Rhodes, an organizer who trusts ladders more than speeches; Darnell Brooks, a storyteller who keeps minutes no one else writes; Avery Sinclair, a corporate insider learning how to defect toward the public good; and Margaret Boone, the archive's keeper, holding a ledger of debts the city has postponed for a century. As bones surface and old accounts reappear in careful ink, Millstown must choose between quick amnesty and slow amends. Pumps fail, storms test, and someone loosens a single pin, hoping to make the river misbehave. Instead, neighbors learn to choreograph flood gardens, tune a stone weir, and write a consent decree that gives the river standing and the community monitors a paycheck. When a hidden "third gate" spring opens under the weir—cold, clear, incorruptible—the city receives both a future and an audit. Riverbones is a cinematic, hope-forward novel about repair framed as action: measuring before mythologizing, naming harm before forgiving, and building systems that can hold during weather and argument alike. It's a love story between a river and a stubborn town, told through bravery, grief, mischief, and the precise verbs of maintenance—test, unseal, plant, listen, stay. If you believe change should feel like neighbors with shovels and clipboards, if you crave endings that close the ledger without closing the heart, this book will hand you a map and ask you to bring your own pencil.